Hopewell has yet to score less than 14 goals this season, and a big part of that is consistently getting control of the ball off of faceoffs, which is exactly what senior midfielder Sean Kent provides.

“The game ball has got to go to our faceoff guy, Sean Kent. He controlled possession and offensively we’re looking strong, and we have to shore up a few things defensively, but it’s still early in the season,” Hopewell Valley head coach Rob Siris said. “Sean is one of our better wrestlers and he’s our hardest worker, and we practice (faceoffs) every single day. We’re not surprised with what Sean is capable of doing,”

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For all of the Bulldogs’ firepower on offense, it was South that jumped out to an early lead. The Pirates’ Luke Merrill and John Matthews both found the net while shutting out the Bulldogs in the first quarter.

In the second quarter, the Bulldogs offense really began to test the young Pirates defense. Thanks to a faceoff win from Kent, Matt Graziano put Hopewell on the board in the quarter’s opening seconds.

The goal kicked off a 7-1 Hopewell run. Hopewell’s Brady Moore had a goal and notched three assists in the second quarter by often going to work behind the net to find his teammates.

“It took us a while to feel out (Moore) in terms of what he was doing, and they took advantage and got some nice goals,” South head coach Matt Foret said.

After the barrage of goals in the first half, the Pirates defense collected itself and limited the Bulldogs to a single goal from Hopewell’s Lane Meyer, while Matthews and Merrill each added a goal to cut the Pirates’ deficit to three entering the fourth quarter.

“With our defense, we’ve had trouble in our first two games with making some adjustments, and our goaltender is a sophomore,” Foret said. “We have a lot of sophomores back there, which is usually not a recipe for success, but we’re making a lot of progress from our first game against Princeton until now,”

Like in the first half, the Bulldogs offense exploded in the latter quarter, dropping eight more goals. Kent, a four-year letter winner in wrestling, could not be stopped in the faceoff circle, winning draw after draw.

The Bulldogs at one point scored two goals in seven seconds, with one of them coming with Kent winning a faceoff and taking the ball by himself to the net for an unassisted goal.

“West Windsor South is one of our better teams in the conference, so to just come out and put the pedal to the metal and beat them was a great feeling,” Kent said.

“We tried to make some adjustments at the faceoff X with putting a pole up there and just trying to keep the ball alive to make some plays,” Foret said of the team’s faceoff woes. “That was a problem. We were just going with our usual faceoff stuff, and it wasn’t working so they were able to string three or four goals together.”

Hopewell sophomore Tyler Krampf had a hat trick in the fourth quarter to finish off the Pirates. Krampf finished the contest with five goals and an assist, and Moore led the team in overall points with three goals and four assists.